Unlike the last update of archrival Netscape's browser package, which represented a major redesign, the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Public Preview makes less than earth-shattering changes. That said, Microsoft did enhance the Search Companion, tweak error reporting and integrate additional online privacy information. You'll also find a new Contacts Bar, Personal Bar, and Media Bar. We hoped for more significant changes, but were pleasantly surprised by the stability of this preview and encountered no problems launching a variety of sites.

Because IE6 will be part of the Windows XP OS package, not just a standalone product, the browser features the same colorful interface and icons as the new OS. Despite the complaints about Windows XP's bright interface, we found the change refreshing.

The IE6 Search Companion allows you to ferret out info on the Web or on your computer and provides you with a choice of four animated characters as guides. Thought-bubbles pop out of your chosen guide's head and prompt you for natural-language queries. But don't worry, characters are far less pushy than the annoying Clippy, and easily dispatched. We opted for Rover the dog.

The new Personal Bar provides a search box, as well as abbreviated MSNBC news, weather, and stock quotes, which you can tailor to your interests. If you've used the Netscape 6 Sidebar, you'll feel right at home with the IE6 Personal Bar - they bear a close resemblance to each other. You can also customize your Personal Bar to include links to your favorite sites. The Contacts Bar lets you quickly access your contacts in Outlook or Outlook Express.

If you've used MSN Explorer, then the Media Bar will look somewhat familiar as well. Microsoft packs in a media player (which will be Media Player 8.0 in the IE6 final release), which you'll find in the bottom left-hand corner of the browser window. Open the bar and you'll see a list of entertainment, music, movies, and radio selections from WindowsMedia.com (Microsoft entertainment portal), that are accessible with one click. The site offers additional categories you can browse for your favorite music, movies, or other media and then play with the built-in media player. The player can be left in its default position or snapped off to float free of your browser.

Microsoft beefed up the way IE handles errors by giving the browser its own Dr. Watson that responds to crashes and automatically links you to a fix or to an article on how to correct the problem. You can also report crashes to Microsoft - but don't expect a response. Eventually this might result in a fix being posted on the company's Web site, so the problem is probably worth reporting if you have a minute.

This release supports enhanced cookie management as well as the upcoming Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) standard. P3P enables users to control how their personal information is used by Web sites they visit. If this feature is turned on, a small flag icon appears at the bottom of your browser. The icon changes to reflect whether or not a site has a P3P-compliant privacy policy. What relevance this feature will have, though, will depend on the breadth of sites' adoption of P3P tagging.

All in all, this public preview provides a promising look of things to come for IE 6. We were impressed by the stability and speed (this beta was much more stable than the Netscape 6 beta), but were a bit disappointed by the meager ration of new features. IE 6 will be worth a look when released in its final form later this year, but don't expect it to have the same impact as its OS counterpart.

Microsoft Tweaks Its Browser

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